Posted on 01/09/2019 10:17:38 PM PST by vannrox
The words, written in big, white, Impact letters, caught my attention as I scrolled idly through Facebook a few months ago: “IF YOU REMEMBER THIS, THEN YOUR CHILDHOOD WAS AWESOME.” They were superimposed on an image that did instantly remind me of something: the SuperPlayground, a wooden play structure in a small park in my hometown, which was torn down and replaced several years ago. In the small, lefty community of Sebastopol where I grew up, in the wine country north of San Francisco, there were many playgrounds, but the SuperPlayground was everyone’s favorite. Whimsical details like a dragon slide, pyramid-framed swings, and pointed wooden towers separated it from the many plastic and metal pre-fab structures elsewhere around town. But best of all were the “secrets” the structure held: the wooden tunnels underneath it big enough only for young children, the corner where a PVC pipe embedded in the wall allowed you to whisper to your friend across the park. There were always places to hide and discover away from prying adult eyes.
It seemed likely that someone from Sebastopol had created the meme. But to my surprise, the original image post had over 30,000 likes (and now over 76,000). Scores of comments enthusiastically identified the playground as Wonderland Park in Wasilla, Alaska, or Imagination Station in Roxbury, New Jersey. Small arguments erupted between people who were sure this photo was taken in different locations around the country. What was going on? Was this treasured childhood memory just another cookie cutter experience created for me by some corporation?
To find out, I had to go back to the 1970s in Ithaca, New York, when a young architect built his first playground inspired by his children’s ideas, to the early 1980s, when the playground safety movement began (with a brief
(Excerpt) Read more at hopesandfears.com ...
We had rules that you had to be a pusher for x minutes before you were allowed to get on.
I don’t have a clue what you’re on about. There’s a kids’ play area exactly like that depicted in the OP in a city park maintained by my one-horse town.
When I was a kid, the jungle gyms were iron and about 15 feet high, and there were no safety devices on the swing sets, teeter-totters or the merry-go-rounds. And the entire play area was crushed graveled (no pea gravel).
That’s one of the reasons that my generation grew up realizing that actions have consequences. Because you learned pretty quickly that if you did something stupid, you were going to have to pay the stupid tax. Unless you truly were stupid, in which case paying the stupid tax just got to be a habit.
If one puts up a monkey bar set in a black neighborhood, does that make said act racist?
If one puts up a monkey bar set in a black neighborhood, does that make said act racist?
“You ask any kid…ANY KID...what they want, and not one of them will say, 'I want something where you sit in it and spin around in a circle for five minutes and then puke.'”
Superplaygrounds were of my kids’ time. We lived in several cities in the 90’s that had one.
My elementary school had a wooden playground and then replaced it with a crappy one.
The style in #19 is the one I remember.
Notice the joinery...”U” bolts and nuts with only vertical pipes capped while horizontals were left open. Not sure what metal was used by the NYC Parks Dept, but I seem to remember a brownish color worn perfectly smooth by years of use
“Notice the joinery...”
A nearby neighborhood (its homeowner’s association) junked out a playground full of the new stuff and bought all new stuff, which cost many thousands. Reasons: (1) lawsuit potential if the old equipment caused injury, (2) they want something pretty and new.
Maybe the replacement was provoked by a crack in a weld on one of the pieces of equipment. Rather than get a local welder to fix it they, as I said, junked everything.
My grade school had one of these, along with rows of see-saws, a slide that you climbed a good twelve foot to the top, swings, basketball courts, half a football field, a softball field and volleyball court. You had concrete, grass and gravel under foot in this playground. We played dodge ball, touch football, smear the queer, tag and about every game imaginable. We would get the swings going as high as possible and bail out at the top of the arc, it hurt but was fun. Playgrounds now are useless and sad, about as fun as a five pound bag of fertilizer.
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